


Nailed Down

by chshrkitten



Category: Places No One Knows - Brenna Yovanoff
Genre: F/F, Mutual Pining, Pre-Canon, Romantic Friendship, canon-typically ambiguous neurodivergence for waverly, i'm picturing them as like...seventh graders in this, the inherent romanticism of nail painting and middle school science facts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:42:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28291833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chshrkitten/pseuds/chshrkitten
Summary: “When a colder object makes contact with a warmer object, heat flows to it from the warmer object in an attempt to reach thermal equilibrium.” Waverly paused. Maribeth’s hands were warm and soft against her own. This wasn’t what she’d been talking about before, but Maribeth didn’t comment. “Thermal conduction. It’s— heat is really internal energy.”“How does it happen?” Maribeth had finished painting three of Waverly’s nails into perfect, glittering ovals. Cockroach eyes.”Maribeth paints Waverly’s nails, and they have a lot of Emotions.
Relationships: Maribeth Whitman/Waverly Camdenmar
Kudos: 1





	Nailed Down

“Why?”

“Because it’ll look pretty.” Maribeth answered as patiently as she could. “Now that we’re becoming popular, that’s important. And we need to think about the little details.”

Waverly nodded, seeming to recognize the logic of that argument, but she kept her hands in her lap. 

Maribeth decided to do what she usually did when Waverly….wavered: act as though she had already agreed. Maribeth plunked the pink zippered case she’d brought from home down on the desk and reached to unzip it. Her extensive collection of nail polish bottles sparkled in the light from Waverly’s gooseneck lamp. 

Waverly raised an eyebrow.

“Pick a color.” Maribeth ordered, and stared her friend down with a look she’d once had to learn to copy from Waverly herself. 

Finally, Waverly shrugged. She reached down into the case, shoving her hand past the bottles that were paint-splattered from frequent use. Maribeth watched her deliberate, intrigued.

_The dark blue, probably. Or maybe the gunmetal grey. I bet she won’t want anything bright— even now, she always seems like she’s trying not to be noticed. It won’t be something I would choose, but it’ll look nice on her._

Maribeth was right. When Wavely extricated her hand from the depths of the bag, it was the unopened bottle of cockroach brown Maribeth’s little brother had given her for Christmas last year that she held up to the light. 

Maribeth sighed. “Okay, so that color is fine, but,” she paused to rummage in the case herself, then held up a bottle of glittery clear shimmer to show her friend, “you’ll need a top coat of this. So that it doesn’t look all ugly and stuff when it’s done.

“That’s fine.” Waverly said, in the flat tones she didn’t bother to disguise when it was just her and Maribeth in the room. “You’re good at things like this, and I don’t care.” 

Maribeth liked that. The more they became popular--the more they had to be different girls in public--the more she liked how natural they could be when it was just the two of them. In public, Maribeth could never just come out and say that cockroach brown was ugly. In public, Waverly could never just come out and say that she didn’t care. It felt like the real Waverly was a special secret that only Maribeth could have. “Hold out your hands.” She said at last. 

Waverly did.

Maribeth took a cotton ball, soaked it in nail polish remover, and started to drag it across Waverly’s pinkie nail in long, smooth strokes. “To get all the oils and skin stuff off your nails.” She explained. 

“From the stratum corneum.”

“The what?” She moved on to Waverly’s ring finger. Waverly wore her nails longer than you’d expect, cut straight across at the tip. Maribeth had to admit to a little jealousy that Waverly’s nails had always been naturally stronger than her own.

“The stratum corneum. It’s the top layer of the epi, epy— epidermis, the skin, and it’s made out of keratin and dead skin cells. It’s a protective layer that keeps your skin safe, and the skin cells in it are constantly being shed and replaced, so that it’s always strong enough to keep toxins out of your body.” Here, she glanced up, clearly waiting to see if Maribeth would cut her off. Maribeth just raised an eyebrow and waited for her to continue. _I really shouldn’t let her get into bad habits, but it’s just us here. And it’s kind of fun hearing her talk. It’s not like she ever talks this much about normal stuff._

“The whole layer is structured like a brick wall.” Waverly was saying, as Maribeth put away the cotton ball and reached for the clear base coat. “The keratin pieces, called cor-nee-oh-sites,” she pronounced the word carefully, and Maribeth knew this must be something she’d just learned about, “and are connected by lipids and glycoproteins. Everyone’s skin makes a new layer of corneocytes every day, pushed up from below so that the top layer sheds. So everyone’s skin is just slightly new every day, and…”

Maribeth let her friend’s voice fade into a quiet murmur in her ears as she focused more closely on her work. The clear base coat glistened, half-dry, over Waverly’s nails. Maribeth picked up her hand and tilted it to check the edges of the polish, how they glittered in the light over the flat keratin of Waverly’s nails. Waverly’s fingers were cool and delicate between Maribeth’s own, slim enough that each joint protruded. The skin over her knuckles was red and rough from the winter air; Maribeth knew that Waverly never remembered her gloves. _I should get her lotion for Christmas. The sage-scented one from that store in the mall that Mama likes. She hates floral stuff but I bet she’d wear that._

***

Waverly trailed off, unsure if Maribeth was still listening. She knew that sometimes she didn’t really listen, but Maribeth still paid more attention to the things Waverly liked than anyone else except Mom, and Mom didn’t count. Mom was her _Mom._

Maribeth hummed a questioning noise under her breath, blinking up at Waverly. Maribeth’s eyes were almost the same blue as the thin veins in her eyelids, where the skin went translucently pale. Lately, Waverly had kept wanting to reach out and touch her fingertips to that vein, to see if she could feel it pulse. For whatever reason, examining her own veins— which showed up as green, not blue, under her yellow skin tone; Maribeth had brought her a color tones quiz the other day —didn’t have the same effect. 

“I’m still listening, Waverly.” Maribeth’s voice was soft and slow, thoughtful in the way that it only was here, alone in her own house. Well, alone with no one but Waverly in her own house, but that came to the same thing. At school, her voice sometimes went higher, sharper, and faster. Lately, Maribeth had been using that sharper voice more and more. Waverly understood why it was necessary. 

“When a colder object makes contact with a warmer object, heat flows to it from the warmer object in an attempt to reach thermal equilibrium.” Waverly paused. Maribeth’s hands were warm and soft against her own. This wasn’t what she’d been talking about before, but Maribeth didn’t comment. “Thermal conduction. It’s— heat is really internal energy.” 

“How does it happen?” Maribeth had finished painting three of Waverly’s nails into perfect, glittering ovals. _Cockroach eyes._

Waverly smiled. “By collisions of particles within a body. Molecules, atoms, electrons.” She hesitated, trying to put into words why this mattered. “It always happens.” She settled on saying at last. “No matter what, whenever two objects of different temperatures touch. Everything in the universe is trying to reach that equilibrium.” _Like your hands and mine are constantly balancing against each other, like your energy is flowing into my hands._

“So weird. But cool, I guess. When do I get my energy back?” Maribeth laughed. This was when Waverly realized that she’d said that last part out loud too.

“When your skin cools down.” The polish was still a dull matte brown on seven of Waverly’s nails, but Maribeth had stopped painting, and was now just holding Waverly’s hands in hers. Her thumb brushed a soft circle over the reddened skin on the back of Waverly’s right hand. Waverly wondered if Maribeth knew she was doing it.

***

Maribeth stared down at their joined hands, waiting for Waverly to pull away. Usually she didn’t let anyone touch her unless there was a legitimate reason, like Maribeth needing help with her ponytail, or wanting to paint Waverly’s nails.

(Maribeth had become increasingly good at coming up with legitimate reasons lately. She’d also become better at not thinking about why she wanted to.)

Waverly didn’t pull away, even when Maribeth cautiously smoothed a thumb over the chapped back of her hand. “When your skin cools down,” she repeated herself, very softly, “your hands will take the heat back from mine. If we wait long enough, you’ll see.”

Maribeth hummed. Without really knowing why, she found herself matching the softness of Waverly’s voice with her own. “I’ll finish your nails while we wait.”

“It won’t be scientific if we’re moving.” Waverly said, but she splayed out her fingers obligingly when Maribeth gestured. 

Waverly was never wrong in her scientific explanations, and Maribeth didn’t doubt her on this one. But when she went to bed that night, with the memory of Waverly’s hands lingering in her own, she still felt cold. Almost shaken.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little fic to sketch out how I picture their friendship at a time when the Red Flags™ are just beginning to develop. Man, I love this novel so much. I don’t know why the only thing I can write for it is weird little stories about a non-canon ship, but what can you do?


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